by Isobel Bird
“I was wondering if you would meet me,” Scott said. “So we can talk.”
“I don’t know,” Kate said, suddenly finding her voice and remembering that she was talking to the guy who had dumped her without warning. “Is there anything to talk about?”
“I think there is,” Scott answered. “But I don’t want to do it on the phone. I was hoping we could take a walk on the beach. I’ll come pick you up.”
“No,” Kate said. “I’ll take the bus.” She didn’t want to be in the car with Scott. She didn’t know what he had to say, and if it was going to make her angry—or, worse, make her cry—she’d prefer to do it in front of strangers on the bus.
“Okay,” Scott said. “Half an hour?”
“Fine,” Kate said, and hung up.
As she pulled on a sweater and jeans, she tried to imagine what Scott could possibly have to say to her. They’d barely exchanged three words since the breakup. Why did he have to see her now? And why couldn’t he just talk to her on the phone? Was he going to admit that he had gone out with Sasha? She still didn’t know what to think about that. Despite the ritual she’d done the night before, she still couldn’t bring herself to feel even the tiniest bit sorry for Sasha. Every time she tried, the girl did something else to make her angry. Just that afternoon Kate had seen her talking to Sherrie as they walked to class. They were laughing like old friends. Meanwhile, Kate was feeling more and more like the outsider as her friends seemed to be choosing Sasha over her.
She tried to not think about it as she walked to the bus stop and waited. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t get the image of Sasha out of her mind. In only a few weeks, the girl had managed to turn everything in Kate’s life upside down. Kate wished that she had never even gone to the Spring Equinox ritual. But then she would probably never have taken the class or decided to do the dedication ritual. And you would never have met Tyler, she thought unexpectedly.
Tyler. He was another problem. What was she going to do about him? She couldn’t just keep ignoring him. But what was she going to say? She felt so stupid about not kissing him on the beach. What had she been thinking? If only Scott hadn’t dumped her, she never would have gone out with Tyler in the first place. And if only Sasha hadn’t done the spell, Scott wouldn’t have broken up with her. Once again, it all came back to Sasha.
But she had gone out with Tyler. She couldn’t take that back. And she’d really enjoyed herself. He was easy to talk to, and he actually listened to what she had to say. Scott sometimes seemed more interested in football than in Kate. And Tyler was cute, there was no denying it. Maybe I should give him a second chance, she thought. That is, if he’ll give me a second chance. She wasn’t entirely sure that he would. After all, she had acted pretty strangely on their date, and she’d avoided him since then. Probably he’d had enough. But you won’t know unless you try, she told herself as the bus neared her stop. But what do I do about Scott? Nothing but have this last talk she decided. And by the time she got off fifteen minutes later, she’d decided to call Tyler that night and see if he wanted another date.
Scott was already standing on the beach when she reached the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt with the hood thrown back. His back was to Kate as she walked toward him, and he didn’t see her until she spoke.
“Hi,” she said softly.
Scott turned around and smiled. “Hi,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Well, it’s not every day a girl gets asked to meet her ex-boyfriend for a secret rendezvous,” Kate said. “How could I resist?” Her words sounded harsh, and Scott looked away from her for a moment, as if she’d slapped him.
“I just didn’t want to talk on the phone,” Scott replied.
“So you thought we should return to the scene of the crime?” Kate asked, her voice rising.
“You’re not making this very easy,” Scott said.
“Why should I?” Kate retorted. “You didn’t make it very easy on me.” All of a sudden, she didn’t know why she’d even agreed to come. What was the point of even talking to Scott? It was over after all, and she’d started to get on with her life. Did she just want to make him feel bad? Did she want to tell him what she thought of him?
“I know,” Scott said. “I know what I said came as a total surprise.”
“That’s an understatement,” said Kate.
“Look,” Scott said. “I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s how our last conversation started,” Kate said, interrupting him. “Why don’t I just leave now and we can skip the part in the middle where you dump me.”
“Will you just let me finish?” Scott pleaded.
Kate didn’t say anything, standing with her arms across her chest staring at Scott, as if daring him to say something else that was going to make her angry.
“I was talking with Sasha the other night,” he said.
“Sasha!” Kate said, forgetting herself. “So you did go out with her!”
“Go out with her?” Scott said, as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “No, I didn’t go out with her. I ran into her at the Frozen Cow while I was there with Sheila Pruitt.”
Kate looked at him with an expression of disbelief on her face. Seeing it, Scott hastily added, “And no, I wasn’t on a date with Sheila, either. We were discussing the senior trip. We’re on the planning committee.”
Kate tried to process everything Scott was telling her, but there was too much going through her mind at once. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You weren’t on a date with Sasha, but you did talk to her?”
Scott nodded. Kate didn’t know what to think. Sasha hadn’t lied to her. She really had just run into Scott by accident. But that still didn’t explain why she had talked to him at all.
“What did she say to you?” Kate asked. Part of her suspected that Sasha had tried to ask Scott out, even if she hadn’t been there with him in the first place.
“She wanted to talk about you,” Scott said.
“Me?” said Kate. “What? She wanted to tell you that I had a date with someone else or something?” She’d mentioned the date thing before she could think not to. She hoped Scott would ignore it, but he didn’t.
“You had a date with someone?” he asked, sounding hurt. “Who?”
“No one,” Kate lied. “Just tell me what Sasha said about me. I’m sure it’s another one of her lies anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Scott said. “You tell me. She told me that breaking up with you was a big mistake because we seemed really great together. She said she wished we would try to work things out.”
Kate felt as if she’d just woken up from a bad dream and didn’t know where she was or what was going on. “She said that?” she asked, not believing it.
“Yes,” Scott said. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe she lied.”
Kate didn’t know how to respond. Sasha had told Scott that they made a good couple? That didn’t make any sense if she was trying to break them up. For a minute she just stood there, the sea wind whipping her hair around her face.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said finally.
“I’ve been thinking about things since then,” Scott told her. “And I think she’s right. I think we have something special. Really special.”
He took Kate’s hand, and she didn’t pull away. She’d forgotten how big Scott’s hands were, and how nice it felt having him hold hers. For a moment it felt like before. But then she remembered why they had broken up in the first place.
“We can’t be a couple,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense, what with you going off to school in New York and me being here.”
“I know,” Scott said. “That’s why I told New York no and accepted the offer here.”
Kate was speechless. Scott was grinning at her, but she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.
“You’re staying?” she said. “Here?”
Scott nodded. “Well, not exactly here. The sch
ool is a couple of hours away. But that’s a lot closer than New York. We can even see each other on weekends. That is, if you want to get back together.”
Scott was staying. Kate couldn’t believe it. He was staying, and he wanted to get back together with her. Why had he changed his mind? Had it been what Sasha said to him? Had her spell really ended? Kate didn’t know. And at the moment, she didn’t care. All she could think about was the fact that Scott wanted her back. Everything else she had been thinking about seemed unimportant.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes!” she said again, more loudly. “Yes, I want to get back together!”
Scott took her in his arms and spun her around. The sand and sky blurred together as she let herself enjoy the feeling of being held by him again. She hadn’t realized just how much she missed him until that moment. But now it didn’t matter. They were back together. She couldn’t wait to tell the girls.
But who would she tell? Annie and Cooper would probably think she was crazy. No, she knew they would think she was crazy. Sherrie and the others might be happy for her, but telling them would mean having to admit that she had been wrong about Sasha.
Sasha. Her stomach sank as she thought about Sasha. Kate had accused her of being a traitor, and she’d been wrong. Sasha had been trying to help her. Kate felt ashamed as she recalled how she had told Sasha off in the chemistry lab and how she’d been wishing that something bad would happen to her. No wonder Sasha thought that Kate had something to do with her being told she couldn’t participate in the dedication ritual. But that really hadn’t had anything to do with Kate.
She had to let Sasha know that. And she had to apologize for the way she’d treated her. Her mind flashed back to lunch the day before, when Sasha had been trying to explain about meeting Scott at the Frozen Cow. But Kate had run off before she could get the full story. She had made assumptions that weren’t true, and she had hurt someone’s feelings in the process. Sasha might be impulsive and immature sometimes, but Kate had judged her too quickly.
I’ll make it up to her, Kate thought as Scott put her down again. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way.
Chapter 14
The Summer House, where Sasha had said she worked, didn’t look anything like its name suggested. It was an ugly cinder block building that had been painted a sickly shade of green in an attempt to brighten it up. But nothing could hide the graffiti spray painted on the walls or the trash that littered the sidewalk around the building’s doors. A mural, long faded, depicted a field of sunflowers along one wall, but it did nothing to dispel the atmosphere of gloom that surrounded the place.
Kate crossed the street and pushed open the door. It had taken her a while to find the right address, and it had been a much longer walk than she’d anticipated. She was relieved to finally be there, even if the condition of the building was something of a shock. But the building wasn’t what she was there for. If she could just get the information she was after, she’d be all set.
She had intended to apologize to Sasha first thing Friday morning. But Sasha hadn’t come to school. Kate asked Sherrie and the others if any of them knew where she was, but they didn’t. Nor did any of them have Sasha’s phone number. That’s when Kate realized that Sasha had never given a number to anyone. She’d never told anyone where she lived, either. She always met up with them at someone else’s house or at school.
Then Kate remembered the Summer House. She knew that Sasha spent a lot of time there doing volunteer work. Maybe, Kate thought, the people there would know how to reach her. She didn’t want another day to go by with Sasha feeling responsible for what had happened between them. So after school, Kate had looked up the address of the shelter and walked there.
The inside of the Summer House wasn’t much nicer than the outside. A stained, yellowing carpet covered the floor, and the cream-colored walls showed what looked to be many years’ worth of dirt. Fingerprints, scuff marks, and other blemishes covered the surfaces, giving the place a tired, worn-out look. Looking at it all made Kate feel very sad, and she wanted to get away as quickly as she could.
There was what seemed to be a reception desk in one corner, with a bored-looking woman sitting behind it. She was reading a magazine, and she didn’t look up when Kate came over to her.
“Excuse me,” Kate said. “I need some help.”
“Are you here for a bed?” the woman asked, barely glancing up. “Because we’re all filled up. Check-in time is six. After that, you’re on your own.”
“No,” Kate said, a little offended that the woman would think she was a runaway. “I don’t need a bed. I’m looking for a friend of mine.”
“Is she registered with us?” asked the woman, turning a page.
“She volunteers here,” Kate said. “We go to school together. I’m hoping that you can tell me where she lives. See, she just moved here, and I forgot her address. But I need to take something to her because she wasn’t in school today.”
“We don’t give out volunteer addresses,” the woman answered.
“This is an emergency,” Kate said. “Really, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. Her name is Sasha, and—”
“Sasha?” the woman said, finally looking up. “Thin girl? Dark hair? Your age?”
Kate nodded. “That’s her,” she said. “I really need to find her. Do you know where she lives?”
“Sure,” the woman said. “She lives here. At least she does when she gets here before six. The rest of the time, who knows?”
“No,” Kate said. “My friend just volunteers here. That must be someone else. The girl I’m looking for wears a big blue gas station attendant’s jacket that says ‘Jack’ on it.”
“That’s her, all right,” the woman answered. “Came in here about three weeks ago.”
Three weeks. That was about the same time that Sasha had showed up at the ritual. But the woman had to be mistaken. Sasha was no runaway.
“She said she moved here from LA,” Kate said.
“She told me Denver,” the woman said, closing her magazine. “But a lot of them make up different stories for different people.”
“Them?” Kate asked.
“The clients,” the woman explained. “The runaways. They don’t want us to find their real families, so they lie about where they’re from.”
Kate was still trying to absorb what the woman was telling her. If what she was saying was true, then Sasha lived at the Summer House. She wasn’t just a volunteer. And she hadn’t moved to Beecher Falls with her family. She had run away.
“Do you know if Sasha’s here right now?” Kate asked. Now she wanted to talk to her more than ever. She had to find out what was going on. Part of her still insisted that this must be a big mix-up and that the woman had Sasha confused with another girl.
The woman shook her head. “She hasn’t come back yet today,” she said. “Sometimes she doesn’t. Like I said, if the girls aren’t in by six, they don’t get in. But she’ll turn up when she needs a bed. Do you want me to tell her you were looking for her?”
“No,” Kate said. “Thanks. You’ve told me more than I came here looking to find out.”
She left the Summer House. But she didn’t know where to go. Knowing that Sasha was a runaway explained a lot of things, like why she seemed to carry everything she owned in her backpack, why she never brought a lunch to school, and why she had been so impressed by Annie’s bedroom. But it brought up more questions than it answered. Kate couldn’t even imagine how Sasha had managed to keep her situation hidden from them. It had to have involved a lot of planning, and being careful what she said. In some ways it was like Kate’s having to hide her involvement with Wicca from everyone but Annie and Cooper. Only Sasha was hiding a much bigger secret. And now that Kate knew what it was, she had to decide what she was going to do.
Now, Kate felt even worse about having been angry at Sasha. If she really was a runaway, it explained why she was so jealous of Kate. Probably she had never had any of the things that Kate and
her friends took for granted. No wonder she had wanted to be like them, no matter what it took. She had probably come to the Spring Equinox ritual hoping that she would meet people who would be nice to her.
Kate wanted to go looking for Sasha. But she had no idea where she might be or what she would say if she found her. So she just walked, thinking, until she came to a bus stop. When the bus came, she got on. As she swiped her pass through the meter, she thought again of Sasha. She didn’t have a bus pass. How did she get around town? How did she get to school every day? And how was she able to go to school, anyway, if she lived in a shelter? Kate’s mind was filled with questions, and no answers.
Kate signaled for the driver to stop at the next corner, where she got off. She walked up the street to Annie’s house. But before she could ring the bell, the door opened and Annie stepped outside.
“Going out?” Kate asked.
“I’m going over to Cooper’s,” Annie said. “We were going to hang out and watch a movie or something. I think she’s tired of spending most of the time over here. We looked for you after school, but you had already left. I figured you were out with Scott or something.”
“I went looking for Sasha,” Kate told her.
“Did you find her?” Annie asked.
“Yes and no,” said Kate. “I’ll tell you on the way to Cooper’s.”
By the time the two of them reached Cooper’s street, Annie was up to speed on the Sasha situation. As Kate talked, Annie just kept shaking her head.
“A runaway?” she said over and over. “Sasha? I wonder what made her do that.”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “But I feel terrible about yelling at her now.”
She forgot about Sasha for a moment as they stopped in front of a large house. Unlike most of the old Victorian homes in the neighborhood, the house was made of stone. Three huge slabs of granite formed steps that led up to a solid wooden door with a brass nameplate affixed to it that said the welton house.
“This is where Cooper lives?” Kate said.
Annie nodded. “This is the address.”